


An Unexpected Occurrence

by MadSinners



Category: I Was Born for This - Alice Oseman
Genre: Cuddling & Snuggling, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-03
Updated: 2018-10-03
Packaged: 2019-07-24 18:19:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16180586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadSinners/pseuds/MadSinners
Summary: Jimmy's anxiety will often keep him up at night, and tonight is worse than usual. When a trip around the house turns sour, will Lister be able to sooth Jimmy's worries?





	An Unexpected Occurrence

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for the Osemanverse big bang and it is incredibly late!! But considering my laptop broke for a month and a half, I think I did ok with the timing. Also, it won't go into the collection for some reason, so that's unfortunate.

Jimmy couldn’t sleep.

This wasn’t an unusual situation- his anxiety would keep him up to the early hours of the morning at least a few times a week, if not more- but today he just couldn’t bear it. It was one of the rare times the boys weren’t on tour, and he didn’t want to spend it exhausted and hating himself; why would he?

He had to do something about this.

The problem with that was it including _doing something_ , which he wasn’t particularly eager for. It was around three in the morning after all. But sacrifices had to be made; the sacrifice being the comfortable position he’d just found.

Deciding that doing something- anything- would be better than just letting his brain run wild with its fantasies, he pulled out his phone and took a look at Angel’s twitter. Since the whole dragging-her-off-to-his-grandpa’s thing, she had changed a lot about her accounts out of respect. Most of her tweets were now about cool fanart, reminders to take care of yourself, news stories about the band, and interactions with other fans or, occasionally, the boys themselves. Looking through it would often help Jimmy relax on these late nights.

One of the first things that showed up was a long thread about having respect for celebrities and other people you look up to. Not far below it was a tweet reminding people to treat The Ark boys like humans and stop building them up into gods. Further down, she had been tweeting back and forth with some other fans, discussing the hiatus the band was currently on. He was happy, although not surprised to see Angel being very positive about it. She had totally shut down the small amounts of complaining scattered throughout the thread.

It wasn’t until about twenty minutes later that he found the post that made his anxiety jump right back up again.

“Did we ever find out who did that?” accompanied by a picture of Rowan, right after that fan had thrown a brick at him. Angel had retweeted it and added, “They’ve been arrested, and they don’t deserve attention in any form anyway, even hate.”

He knew it didn’t make sense to be panicking about that situation. It had happened in a place filled with people, a place where it was a risk, a place that wasn’t private. These events always had a small amount of risk involved, that much was unavoidable. This was their apartment; their home. This was a safe space. He was safe here.

He had to be safe here.

But it didn’t feel that way.

His heart rate was rising again, and fast. Shit, this was not meant to happen. Looking at his phone was meant to help. This was worse, so much worse. Every worry he’d had in the past months came crashing back onto him.

Eventually he couldn’t take it anymore. He swung his legs out of bed and jumped up. He had to check on Rowan and Lister, or he’d never be able to sleep.

Jimmy already knew how to get around the house silently. He’d had enough sleepless nights where he had to creep around. With his head foggy from all his thoughts, he slipped through the hall and over to Rowan’s room. He silently cracked the door open just enough to see Rowan and watched the steady rise and fall of his chest for a few moments. Once he was finally convinced that his best friend was perfectly okay, he slipped back out of the room and let the door softly fall closed behind him.

Then he headed to Lister’s room. He used the wall as a guide, taking soundless steps towards the door. His thoughts echoed around his head as he went.

_“Just gotta see that Lister’s okay. Then I can rest. But what if something happens to Rowan while I’m checking Lister? What if something happens to one of them when I go back to bed? There might already be someone in the flat. They might be targeting me. They could be anywhere. Even right behind me, or hidden behind a door or- No, I’m being ridiculous. But there might be. There are people out there who would hurt us. We know there are-”_

While captivated by these concerns, he’d reached the door. Actually, he’d reached a little past the door. More specifically, he’d opened the door on autopilot, immediately stumbled over something and fallen directly to the ground. Which had, of course, caused a bit of a noise.

Lister sat up with a start and looked around, rubbing his eyes, until he located Jimmy on the floor. After a couple seconds of exhausted and confused staring, he managed to form words.

“Jimmy? Are you okay?”

“I, uh, y-yeah,” he awkwardly started pulling himself up, “s-sorry, I-”

“Couldn’t sleep?”

“Uh, yeah,” he murmured sheepishly. “Anxiety.”

“Do you… wanna stay in here for a bit? Would that help?” Lister asked, half-shyly.

Jimmy’s face flushed a little. “You don’t mind?”

“Of course not. You know I’ll do anything I can to help you.” He shifted over to one side of his bed and rubbed his eyes sleepily.

Still reeling from his fall, Jimmy stumbled over to him. Lister smiled so wide that Jimmy thought his cheeks might split, and he opened his arms. Jimmy took the hint and all but collapsed into the bed.

Lister dragged him into a gentle, warm hug without even thinking about it. Jimmy shuffled about a little and after a couple minutes of adjusting, they found a position that was comfortable for them both; Lister lying on his back, and Jimmy cuddled into his side. Within only a few minutes, Lister’s breathing had evened out and Jimmy could tell he was asleep. He let out a soft sigh and nestled his head up against Lister’s chest. The soft beating of his heart soothed his anxiety until his eyelids grew heavy and he almost drifted off to sleep.

Before he could quite slip into slumber, his hand brushed against Lister’s scar and his eyes flew open. The guilt of knowing it had been caused by his knife slammed into him and he could feel his breathing quickening all over again.

_Oh no,_ he thought to himself. Suddenly all he could think of was that night. The adrenaline, the terror, the sheer shock of finding him-

The sudden rush of memories made him feel sick.

He broke out in a cold sweat, feeling the awful panic of his anxiety over taking him again. No, no, no, he couldn’t do this, not here, not right next to Lister, not in his _bed-_

He’d woken Lister up.

The combination of the temperature change, his sudden tenseness and his gentle hyperventilating had proved just enough to shake Lister out of the light slumber he’d been in. There was no way out of this now.

Lister’s head shot up when he realized that Jimmy was on the verge of tears. “Hey, Jimmy, what’s wrong? Did something happen?”

Jimmy shook his head, tears threatening to spill over. He was trembling uncontrollably. “N-No, I just… I…” His voice wavered as his panic dissolved into desperate sobbing.

The concern clear on his face, Lister sat up and pulled Jimmy close to him. “Hey, hey, hey, calm down, you’re safe, we’re okay. Everything’s okay, Jimmy. Everything’s okay.”

He gently tugged him right onto his lap and wrapped his arms around him softly. He stroked Jimmy’s hair and kept quietly repeated “Everything’s okay, Jimmy. Everything’s okay.” Until, eventually, Jimmy started to calm down again.

The shaking slowly subsided, and his eyes dried. Soon, he had managed to get his breathing back to normal, and his heart rate had dropped down to something more reasonable.

“I’m… I’m sorry, it was just…” He trailed off again and, knowing he wouldn’t be able to finish his sentence, he gently ran his hand over the scar again.

There was a slight hiss as Lister took a sharp breath. “That wasn’t your fault. You know that, right? It was all a big mess, you couldn’t have done anything to stop it. You did everything just right.”

“I… Yeah, I know. I know.” He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself more than anything. “But it’s still… scary. To think about what could’ve happened. Y’know...?”

Lister nodded. “But it didn’t. You gotta stop worrying about what could’ve happened, and just remind yourself that it didn’t. I’m fine now. ‘kay?”

“Y-yeah… Yeah.” He squeezed his eyes shut. “Sorry about this-”

“Don’t apologise. You don’t need to be sorry about this. That’s what friends are for, right?” He smiled softly, but Jimmy could feel a hint of sadness behind it. “It’s getting late. We should get some sleep.”

Jimmy bit his lip and nodded. “Sorry to keep you up so long.”

“I don’t mind. It was to help you, after all.” Lister wriggled back down, tugging Jimmy down with him.

Soon enough the two of them had returned to their comfortable cuddling again, and Jimmy could feel Lister falling asleep under him.

“Goodnight,” he whispered, his voice catching.

“’Night,” Lister mumbled, the last glimmer of a smile on his lips.

The morning begun hazily. Jimmy opened his eyes, having had around only four hours of sleep. His head was fuzzy with sleep deprivation, and the warmth of Lister’s chest threatened to drag him back under the comforting blanket of slumber. Nevertheless, he did his best to force his eyes fully open and pull away from Lister- but found that he couldn’t.

Lister’s arm was hooked tightly, although comfortably, around his waist. There was no way he was getting away before he woke up. So, Jimmy just had to accept his fate, and cuddle back into Lister. Sure, he could try to wake him up. But he was the one who woke him up twice in the middle of the night; he couldn’t in good conscience wake him up again first thing in the morning.

He lay with him for maybe half an hour before the sunlight crept through the curtains enough to force Lister to wake up. When he finally did, he blinked repeatedly before managing to get his eyes to stay open.

“Morning,” he yawned, clearly still exhausted.

“Morning. Sorry again about keeping you up last night.”

“I keep telling you,” he paused to yawn again, “you don’t need to apologise for this. I’m always okay with helping you. Even when it’s four am. _Especially_ when it’s four am. Knowing I can do something to help you is… it’s… well, it’s really cool.” He mussed his hair awkwardly, trailing off.

“Lister,” Jimmy stopped and sighed, realising he had no idea what he actually wanted to say. “Thank you. Not just for last night, for everything. You’re always… you’re always there. And I, uh, I feel like I don’t mention that I appreciate it enough. I don’t know where we’d be without you.” He swallowed, feeling like he could’ve, no, should’ve said more, or said it better. But he just didn’t know how.

A lazy smile spread across Lister’s face. “Thanks, Jimmy. You’re a sweetheart.”

Jimmy’s face lit up in an awkward flush. “I, um… I know this probably isn’t the best time, but…” He hesitated, anxiety over what he was about to say suddenly hitting him. _Am I really going to do this?_ He wondered. Then he shook that thought away. He _was_ going to do this. “But I’ve been… I’ve been thinking a lot. And… I think…” His voice slipped away from him, stolen by nerves.

Lister’s face was lighting up, but Jimmy could see him trying to hold back. Whether he was trying to not get his hope’s up, or just trying to not scare Jimmy out of doing it, he wasn’t quite sure. Either way, it gave him the confidence to go on.

“I think that I may possibly, kinda… Like you.” The final words jumped out of his throat before he had time to overthink it. A wave of panic rose up, but it was swept away by the gorgeous smile that was illuminating Lister’s face.

“I think that I may possibly, kinda like you too,” he grinned, trying to bite the smile back, but failing miserably.

Jimmy tried to cover his rapidly reddening cheeks, but Lister pulled his hands away.

“Don’t. You’re even cuter when you blush.” And just when Jimmy thought his heart couldn’t take any more, Lister kissed his cheeks. “And I think I may possibly, kinda want to be your boyfriend. If you’re okay with that.”

Jimmy felt like he might explode. Every word felt like a firework in his mouth. “Yeah, I- I would be okay with that. I would be so okay with that.”

Maybe the anxiety of the previous night had been worth it after all.


End file.
